It’s not supposed to be like this, living in paradise …
A senior has revealed to TNN how her twilight years have found her living in fear of a rogue neighbour and fellow tenant, who has rerouted her water supply for his own benefit, leaving the woman and her adolescent great-grandson without running water for more than a year.
Making matters worse has been the woman’s inability to get the overseas-based landowner or the managing agency to provide adequate recourse to her dilemma, while approaches to various governmental social agencies, police and her area MP, Premier David Burt, have likewise offered no alternative pathway to relief.
The rival tenant has been depicted by the woman, as a cold-hearted, individual, concerned only with preserving his own creature comforts, even if it is at the expense of a 70-something grandmother, struggling to make ends meet.
“I’m living in this house where we haven’t had running water for this past year and a few months,” explained the woman, who’s identity TNN has chosen to withhold in an effort to minimise the potential for reprisal from the man in question.
“When it rains we’re able to collect water directly off the roof, but the pump is not working because the other tenant has taken over the pump.
“He’s unplugged the pump and connected it to his side, so my great grandson and I have to wait for it to rain and then we have to bathe in little basins.
“I have to use buckets and things to collect the water or go over to my cousin’s house or to my sister’s house or to other people’s houses just to get a shower or whatever.
“That’s how we’re living.”
The woman remain mystified as to why the man, who supposedly has his own dedicated pump, seems determined to create unnecessary hardship for her and a young boy she provides guardianship for due to his father having been forced to live overseas due to his gang affiliation and activities, while the mother has her own challenges with substance issues.
“I don’t know why he won’t sort out his own pump,” she furthered. “We’ve had the police come down here and they say that they can’t do anything.
“They said that the agency and a lawyer have to come down here in order to get him out, because he’s not supposed to be staying in that apartment bottom line.
“I’ve talked to the girl that owns this place and the agency and they say that they’re trying their best to get him out.
“When the police came he told them that we have to share the pump, but we don’t, because I called the girl who owns the house and she told me that he has his own pump, a new one she said she had bought before she left the Island more than a year ago.
“I approached him and asked him why he was using my pump and he said that he needed water and maybe I should move out of the house. So I asked him if the house belonged to him and and then came back inside my house.”
Just like her great grandson, the woman is anxious to find new alternative accommodations for herself and great-grandson, preferably outside Bermuda, but because she requires in-person permission from one of the boy’s parents for travel, she finds herself stuck between a rock and a hard place.
“I’ve been going out, looking for a place,” she said. “I’ve been to my social worker and explained my situation.
“I’ve been to rent control. I went to Colonel Burch’s office. I complained to my MP , who is the Premier and nothing has been done here.
“I was told to give my information to what must have been the Premier’s secretary, but I have gotten no results.
“I even called the health department and two girls came here and one of them asked me if we could deal with the matter together, but I told her no, because the boy refuses to buy water, even though he uses up most of the water and it’s been like that ever since I’ve been here.”
A case of paradise lost indeed.
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